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I guess this is how Republicans do the Latino-outreach thing: Demonize Latino children, threaten to take away their birthright citizenship, and blatantly lie about the numbers of "anchor babies" being born by mothers coming here specifically to have citizen children.

Here's Sen. David Vitter yesterday on Fox News, promoting his new federal bill to strip American-born children of undocumented immigrants of their birthright citizenship:

VITTER: It's a very real problem. About 200,000 women come into this country annually from other countries legally, with a tourist visa, something like that, to give birth in this country so that child can automatically become a U.S. citizen. 200,000 a year!

I'm guessing that Vitter's source for this number is either somewhere up his own nether regions, or those of hate groups such as FAIR and CIS that pump out fake statistics like this for eager Latino-bashers like Vitter and his three Senate colleagues to regurgitate into policy.

Because, as ABC News explained in their own report on this legislation:

Of the 4.2 million live births in the United States in 2006, the most recent data gathered by the National Center for Health Statistics, only 7,670 were children born to mothers who said they do not live here.

Some of those mothers could be "baby tourists," experts say, but many could be foreign college students, diplomatic staff, or vacationers. The government does not track the reasons non-resident mothers are in the United States at the time of the birth or their citizenship.

Indeed, as the story notes, the "anchor baby" problem is a statistical pimple:

"There's no evidence that birth tourism is a widespread problem," said Michele Waslin, a senior policy analyst with the Immigration Policy Center. "There are ways to dealing with that issue without such sweeping changes. This is like using a sledgehammer, not a scalpel."

Indeed, as we explained when Russell Pearce trotted out the same garbage in Arizona:

[T]his is a sick joke. Surveys of undocumented workers have made indelibly clear that they don't come here to have "anchor babies," or to get our free health care, or any of the other fantasies harbored by nativists: they come here for jobs.

Moreover, there's no serious benefit to be had from having your child be born a citizen -- because under American law, you can be deported anyway, and in fact thousands of parents of American birthright-citizen children are deported every year: 100,000 of them over 10 years, to be precise.

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You know that plan by Arizona Senate President Russell Pearce -- the architect of SB1070 -- to push through legislation that would deny the children of undocumented immigrants their traditional American citizenship by birthright?

Seems it ran into a bit of an obstacle this week:

A bid to deny citizenship to the children of illegal immigrants faltered Monday when proponents could not get the votes of a Senate panel.

After more than three hours of testimony at the Senate Judiciary Committee, Sen. Ron Gould, R-Lake Havasu City, yanked the two measures. Gould said he lacked the backing of four other members of the Republican-controlled panel, which he chairs.

Gould said he will keep trying to secure votes. And Senate President Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, said, if necessary, he will reassign the proposal to a more friendly committee.

There was a lot of testimony about the bill, including an invited "expert" who urged the senators to pass the bill just so the state can immediately embark upon an expensive legal defense that they hope will go all the way to the Supreme Court -- where he predicts there will finally be "clarity" on the 14th Amendment's guarantee of citizenship to every person born on American soil.

But other than that, the committee heard nothing but criticism, including testimony from children begging them not to take their citizenship away, to a Democratic senator who wanted to know how people would prove their citizenship: Would they have to carry copies of their parents' birth certificates too?

However, I will just about guarantee that the testimony that convinced this committee full of Republicans to think twice before committing the state's taxpayers to this misadventure came from the business community:

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Of course, longtime C&L readers are well aware that Arizona's new Senate president, state Sen. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, has a long and colorful history of associating with and endorsing neo-Nazis, particularly noted Arizona Nazi J.T. Ready.

Now that Pearce is leading the national effort to undermine the 14th Amedment and end birthright citizenship, he's eager to put all that behind him. Indeed, for the past couple of years, whenever anyone has brought up the old Pearce connections has been met with scornful and adamant denials.

Right. So it's a little harder for Pearce to explain as Stephen Lemons at Phoenix New Times reports, Pearce ordained Ready as an elder in the Mormon church they both attend.

Or why, as Dennis Gilman demonstrates in the video above, Pearce applauded Ready's speech at an anti-immigrant event in 2007, and gladly posed for pictures with him that same year. And then heartily endorsed Ready as an upstanding soldier in the fight against immigration.

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Our favorite neo-Nazi-friendly legislator, Arizona's own Russell Pearce, has been hankering to revoke Latinos' birthright citizenship for a long time. But now he's actually the president of the Arizona State Senate -- which means he has real power.

And with SB1070 under his belt, he's ready to roll -- not just in Arizona, but nationally.

Interestingly, a recent Arizona Republic editorial actually begged him not to, considering that it's not going to do a thing to help Arizona get out of its budget crisis:

With Arizona facing huge shortfalls, this is no time for distractions.

It's hard to imagine a worse distraction than trying to write our own rules on citizenship.

Unfortunately, Senate President-elect Russell Pearce is a keen promoter of trying to reinterpret the 14th Amendment, which establishes birthright citizenship, through state law.

Never mind that the U.S. Constitution is completely outside the jurisdiction of state legislators. Or that the state faces its worst financial crisis ever.

This is like calling the fire department when your house is in flames - and the firefighters responding by rushing to Washington, D.C., to spray water on the Capitol.

There are wiser perspectives among the incoming legislators. Some senators supported Pearce, a Mesa Republican, for the top leadership job with the understanding that he wouldn't file a birthright bill.

That was, it turns out, more than a bit naive. Because there's nothing to stop someone else from dropping such legislation.

"I never pledged not to hear the bill," Pearce said in a recent Editorial Board meeting. "Will I facilitate it getting passed? Yes, I will."

Pearce claims that Arizona suffered no harm from Senate Bill 1070, his last do-it-yourself immigration-enforcement job. That's not what business people say. Arizona is still suffering from the economic damage, not to mention the bitter divisions, of that misguided law. The consequences - the opportunities lost, the long-lasting stain on our image - will stretch on for years.

In other words, Pearce pulled a fast one on his fellow Republicans in order to win the Senate presidency. Because yesterday, there he was on Fox's Your World with guest host Brian Sullivan, not only touting the bill essentially as his project -- and vowing to unveil it as a national project:

SULLIVAN: You are not keeping this in the Arizona borders. You are announcing this at the National Press Club, right, next week.

PEARCE: Yes. Yes.

(CROSSTALK)

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Ah, there's nothing like watching Bill O'Reilly bloviate on Fox News to get daily lessons in journalistic ethics -- lessons, that is, in how to rather nakedly discard ethics altogether.

On Wednesday, O'Reilly featured a segment on the Justice Department's threat to sue Sheriff Joe Arpaio over his refusal to cooperate with its investigation of his racial-profiling practices. (Naturally, the feds have so far punked out.)

To do this, he brought on a guest named Rachel Alexander, identified as a "former deputy attorney for Maricopa County, AZ" -- and that was it. Alexander then proceeded to assure O'Reilly that the DOJ's threats, as well as its investigation, were purely "political" -- though all she could point to was some coincidental timing around the SB1070 matter, which in fact only arose well after the DOJ began investigating Arpaio.

But what is unmentioned is that Alexander, when she worked for Maricopa County, was a well-known operative and shill for the DA, Andrew Thomas -- one of Arpaio's most prominent allies. (When Thomas stepped down to run for Arizona Attorney General, he left Arpaio exposed to potential investigation, but Alexander departed with him shortly. Nowadays she identifies herself as the "Director of Social Media" for the J.D. Hayworth campaign.)1

What is also unmentioned is that Alexander is under investigation, along with Thomas, for ethical violations while working for Maricopa County:

In March, Berch ordered an inquiry into Thomas' behavior after a Superior Court judge ruled that Thomas acted unethically in his prosecution of Maricopa County Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox. The inquiry was prompted in part by the State Bar of Arizona, the semi-governmental agency that licenses and polices lawyers in the state.

The Bar asked that an outside investigator be appointed, and the court appointed Colorado attorney John Gleason.

The Arizona Supreme Court also appointed former Supreme Court Chief Justice Charles Jones as the "probable cause panelist," a judge of sorts.

Since then, several other complaints have been lodged against Thomas with the state Bar, including one by an association of defense attorneys.

Two of Thomas' former top prosecutors, Rachel Alexander and Lisa Aubuchon, also are under investigation. Alexander has since left the office, and Aubuchon is suspended with pay pending an internal investigation at the County Attorney's Office.

Thomas, Alexander and Aubuchon asked Jones to dismiss the complaints. Jones refused. On July 1, they filed their petitions for special action.

Some of this may have to do with Alexander's penchant for political cheerleading on the taxpayers' dime:

Rachel Alexander, the deputy county attorney now handling the Maricopa County Attorney's racketeering lawsuit against a host of county officials, was working out of Thomas' executive office as recently as mid-December, county records show.

Indeed, Alexander -- a conservative blogger and longtime Thomas supporter -- wasn't transferred to the MCAO's Major Crimes Unit until December 14. That's just one week before she became the attorney of record on the extremely complicated racketeering suit, in which Thomas accuses the county supervisors, some judges, and other elected officials, of being part of an elaborate criminal conspiracy.

The timing on that transfer is interesting because it confirms our theory -- posited on this blog yesterday -- that Alexander is an odd choice to be handling the RICO litigation. Thomas has basically staked his reputation on the idea that the county officials who oppose him are engaged in a massive (and bizarre) coverup so they can build their pet project. (According to the suit, the elected officials allegedly conspired to build a new county courthouse and thwart the county attorney from investigating it.)

But the lawsuit itself is a bizarre melange of unsubstantiated allegations and details that don't quite add up to anything. A veteran prosecutor would have a hell of a time advancing this case; a prosecutor with one week's experience in major crime is likely doomed.

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It seems that back in 1993, Sen. Harry Reid attacked birthright citizenship for children of illegal immigrants, a position he later renounced and now stands thoroughly opposed to.

But the change in position gave Ann Coulter and Bill O'Reilly a chance not just to whack Reid last night on Fox, but for Coulter -- that self-described "constitutional attorney" -- to claim that the 14th Amendment doesn't really create birthright citizenship:

COULTER: And by the way, it is being lied about every place, but this is what the 14th Amendment required. I mean, Americans -- what Harry Reid was saying was utter common sense. Americans must be sitting back thinking, "What were they thinking back in 1860? Were Americans really worried? What is it? We haven't guaranteed citizenship."

O'REILLY: No, it was a totally different things. It was African-Americans being liberated from slavery.

COULTER: Right.

O'REILLY: It was Native Americans being tossed off their land.

COULTER: It was not Native Americans. Native Americans were excluded from the 14th Amendment. It was all about Reconstruction. It was about free slaves, this multi-culti rainbow coalition is a brand-new invention.

It wasn't like Americans were upset that the deadbeats couldn't slip into the country and have babies and start collecting welfare. We didn't have welfare then. It was amazing they even thought about it.

It was all part of Reconstruction to get an amendment added to the Constitution.

O'REILLY: OK.

COULTER: It was a big step. This whole baby anchor thing comes from a footnote that was not related to the opinion, in an opinion by Justice Brennan in 1982.

O'REILLY: But it would be very hard. It would be very hard and, I think, impossible.

COULTER: It's not in the Constitution.

O'REILLY: I think it's impossible now to get that anchor baby thing to be illegal, because you would have to get -- they would tie it to the 14th. Then it would have to go to the Supreme Court. Is it part of the amendment or not?

COULTER: Look, whether this is done by -- legislatively or by passing an amendment, I don't care about. I do care about being lied to about what the 14th Amendment says.

O'REILLY: OK, but let's be...

COULTER: That is a lie.

But then, a little over an hour later, former Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr -- the conservative attorney whose work pursuing Bill Clinton in the 1990s gave Ann Coulter her original raison d'etre as a media figure -- came on Greta Van Susteren's show and explained exactly why Coulter is full of crap:

STARR: Well, Greta, I think it would take a constitutional amendment to change that. You know, this is an ancient part of law, that we then made absolutely clear in the 14th Amendment, which was ratified after our Civil War. And the 14th Amendment guarantees every person certain rights to due process, to the protection of life, liberty and property, to the equal protection of the laws. And that is such an important set of protections for all of us as Americans.

But it also begins -- that is, the 14th Amendment, this post-Civil War amendment begins with a specific definition that a person born in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction of the United States is a citizen of the United States. That's pretty clear to me.

So I think it would take a constitutional amendment to change it. But it's not as if the ratifiers and the architects of the 14th Amendment just made it up. They were really restoring a very venerable tradition in English law and frankly United States law -- until the infamous tradition of the Supreme Court in Dred Scott that held African Americans, those who were in a condition of servitude, who were slaves, were not citizens of the United States. That was profoundly wrong, and it took a constitutional amendment to overrule that decision of the United States Supreme Court.

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Those Dred Scott Republicans who want to do away with the 14th Amendment and birthright citizenship are sure being ever so helpful when it comes to reforming our immigration laws.

They won't approve any plan creating a path to citizenship for the 12 million or so immigrants who are here illegally because, according to Republicans, that's "amnesty." Of course, they also agree that we can't round up and deport 12 million people. But any plan with a citizenship path -- regardless of how many penalties you throw at the immigrants, including heavy fines -- means Republicans will denounce it as "amnesty."

And what do they propose to fix the problem? Why, amend the Constitution, of course. Why, what could be simpler?

And the best part is: Their proposal to amend the 14th Amendment to throw out birthright citizenship wouldn't even solve an identifiable problem -- except a fake "anchor baby" scare that exists only in the fevered imaginations of paranoid white nativists.

Sen. Harry Reid and the Democrats understand this. So do some conservatives. And so yesterday Reid replied to the senators like Lindsey Graham and Jon Kyl, who think "anchor babies" are a major threat facing the nation, by reading from an op-ed by onetime Reagan/Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson:

The authors of the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed citizenship to all people "born or naturalized in the United States" for a reason. They wished to directly repudiate the Dred Scott decision, which said that citizenship could be granted or denied by political caprice.

They purposely chose an objective standard of citizenship -- birth -- that was not subject to politics. Reconstruction leaders established a firm, sound principle: To be an American citizen, you don't have to please a majority, you just have to be born here.

Reid then paraphrased Gerson by observing of his Republican colleagues, "They've either taken leave of their senses or their principles.

As you can see in the video above, even some Fox News anchors and reporters are not so certain it's such a sound idea.

But the best part of all this is, as we explained when Russell Pearce proposed such a law for Arizona, the entire enterprise is predicated on the notion that, as Pearce put it, we'll never solve the problem of illegal immigration if we don't cut off the great big incentive of having "anchor babies" here.

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